Posted on 01/07/2011 4:37:15 PM PST by jazusamo
Once powerful lobbyist Paul Magliochetti was sentenced Friday to 27 months in prison for making hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign donations and lying to the Federal Election Commission.
U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III also sentenced Magliochetti to two years of supervised release and ordered him to pay a $75,000 fine.
Magliochetti, a former staffer on the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee who had close ties to the late Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), in September pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., to one count each of making false statements, illegal conduit political contributions and illegal corporate political contributions.
For two decades Magliochetti ran a top lobbying shop specializing in defense earmarks. Magliochetti showered lawmakers with millions of dollars in campaign contributions -- some of them from straw men who were illegally reimbursed for cutting the checks. The lawmakers who received the campaign cash, including Murtha and other senior appropriators such as Reps. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.), secured millions of dollars in earmarks for PMA clients.
“Paul Magliocchetti spent half of a decade gaming the system. He concocted a massive scheme to secretly funnel money to political campaigns – all so that he could gain wealth and prestige,” said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division. “As today’s sentence makes clear, he must now pay a price. We will continue to bring to justice those who hide the source of campaign funds and thus damage the integrity of our election process.”
Before Ellis imposed the sentence, Magliochetti said that he accepted responsibility for misconduct impacting his family, friends and employees at his lobbying firm.
“I know this is not a victimless crime,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
The firm shut down after the FBI raided its offices in November 2008.
Murtha, Visclosky, Moran and others who received the donations were unaware of Magliochetti’s scheme, the Justice Department investigation found. At one point during the investigation, Visclosky temporarily stepped down as chairman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee after being subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating the now-defunct PMA Group.
Magliochetti admitted that, from 2003 to 2008, he used members of his family, friends and PMA lobbyists to make the unlawful campaign contributions. Aware of the strict limits on individual federal campaign contributions – and an outright ban on corporate contributions – Magliochetti conceded that he instructed the conduits to write checks out of personal checking accounts to specific candidates for federal office and then reimbursed the individuals using personal corporate money.
Through the scheme, Magliochetti caused several lawmakers’s campaign committees to file false reports with the FEC regarding the contributions they had received.
Mark Magliochetti, Paul’s 34-year-old son, in early August pleaded guilty to making illegal corporate contributions. He was sentenced to 14 days in prison and five and a half months of home confinement.
So did Murtha.........
Dirtbag Ping!
Absolutely!
Took two paragraphs to get to the (D) label.
Only scratching the surface.
I want to know when the investigations to the illegal money from other country s that went to the Obumbler campaign? We have to go after these people where it hurts the most.
I’ll second that!
You got that right, Magliochetti, you slimy puke.
Every dollar funneled to you in earmarks by Murtha, Moran, and that crooked bunch; was a dollar stolen from American taxpayers.
Rot in prison, you maggot.
If the politicians did not know of the scheme, what benifit did Magliochetti get from the donations. I know a cover up when I smell it.
Well said, Smooth.
It’s a shame he wasn’t sentenced to a lot more years to rot, the stolen dollars were at least in the tens (more like hundreds) of millions. Plus there should be more of those maggots in there with him.
Exactly!
Murtha, Visclosky, Moran and others got huge sums of money in earmarks for this turkey’s clients and for the FBI to say these politicians didn’t know about the scam is ludicrous.
Their denial reminds me of the famous Claude Raines photo here at FR.
As a matter of fact when the talk started about closing down Gitmo Murtha made a statement to the effect that there was plenty of room in his district to build a replacement prison. He also said the people would be glad to get it because of the jobs however a lot of his people didn't subscribe to that.
There was quite a bit said here about naming it for him and then he could do time in his own prison. LOL!
I wonder what the sum total of the money involved was -- in "contributions" received and taxpayer dollars spent.
And this is the guy that Nancy "The Most Ethical Congress In History" Pelosi wanted for her #2. Probably because he was so adept at corruption...
Good points, the money amount has to be huge.
Murtha and Pelosi were friends for years and she probably learned from him. I can’t believe her corruption in the Bay area with real estate hasn’t come back to bite her, I guess she’s as slippery as Murtha was. She and her relatives were involved in the Presidio deal, Treasure Island, Hunters Point and probably others.
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